CONTEMPLATIVE JOURNEY


Anthony Padovano (1995). A Retreat with Thomas Merton: 

                                            Becoming Who We Are


Padovano is a Catholic priest that studied, researched, wrote, and gave retreats on the life of Thomas Merton. This short book is one in a series of books by various authors that encourage lay people to "go on retreat." The retreat is very flexible in form...i chose to do one day a week for 7 days in a row on summer vacation, reading and reflecting in the afternoons in July of 2022.

One message that struck me: we only need to BE WHO WE TRULY ARE, to honor our calling in this life, to grow into the unique person we are meant to be...and to do this we look inward and connect with our divine source through contemplation that opens the door to discovering and becoming our authentic self.

Merton's journey is one of childhood tragedies (e.g., the death of both parents before he is an adult), and difficulties including depression during college years which eventually, through two mystical experiences (a vision of his father and the heavenly sound of a choir) lead him to the monastery and a monk's life...here he finds a home and peace...soon his writings connect him to the outside world, evolving from a judgmental tone in early works to an openness in later works that lead him to discover mystical experience in Buddhism, and ultimately his death after giving a lecture in Asia.


Questions for contemplation based on my read of the book:

Can you trace a map of your own journey in life on a single blank page with whatever words and symbols make sense to you? 

What struggles/challenges have you overcome (and/or are you overcoming) on this life journey? 

Are there periods of the life journey that you can identify as peaceful times/places, a  home...what's it like there (or what would you like it to be, how do you envision it)? 

How committed are you to one particular religion/faith/spirituality/tradition/philosophy on your life journey? 

Is it possible to open into other ways of being/doing? if so, how might you begin to learn about and integrate some of these new ways of being/doing into your life (just one simple thing from one way for starters)?










 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more